He Chose My Stepsister at Our Engagement,I Walked Out and Never Came Back

The girl behind the velvet counter offered, kindly, to show me another setting. I declined.

"I'll take this one. It's only a formality. No need to fuss."

Lorenzo caught the edge in my voice, and he didn't like it. A made man notices when a knife is hidden under calm words.

"If you don't like it, don't buy it. Vittoria can have one made for you later."

I shook my head.

"This one's fine."

But Vittoria's face crumpled, all guilt, her eyes welling up on cue. Her fingers found the pendant at her throat and twisted it.

"Adriana, I'll go to the workshop right now and stay all night on the design. I promise you'll have a perfect ceremony."

With that, she hurried out, past the man at the door who shifted aside without being told. She wouldn't stop no matter how Lorenzo called after her.

"Adriana, what is wrong with you? It's just a ring. What are you making a scene about?"

I couldn't help staring at him.

"What scene am I making?"

His lips pressed thin. He pulled me out of the shop, his hand at my elbow like a man steering cargo.

"There's something at the club I have to handle. We'll sit for the portraits when there's time."

"Or go ahead and take yours alone. I'll have someone paint my dress in beside you for the ceremony."

"Fine."

Whatever explanation Lorenzo had been about to give caught in his throat. He looked at me a long moment, then pulled me into a light embrace.

"Adriana, once all this is settled, I'll take you away somewhere. We'll have the portraits done then, somewhere far from the famiglia."

The escape he dangled now was nothing but an insult to me.

He'd never once found the time to cross the water and see me where Don Lombardi had given me a place at his table. Yet he'd had time to take Vittoria to the bottom of the world to watch the penguins, to the top of it to chase the northern lights.

I watched his pin drift across the map on my screen, his little marker heading straight for Vittoria's workshop. I went back into the shop and handed the ring back to the girl.

Just as I expected, Lorenzo didn't come home for two days.

Because he was at the shore, sitting for wedding portraits with Vittoria.

And he really had paid someone to paint our two faces together into a bridal portrait.

Set on running from this union, I figured I'd only come back now for my parents' death anniversaries.

I carried two bouquets to the cemetery to visit them. I added the caretaker's number too, so it would be simpler to have the plot tended from across the water from then on.

"From now on I'll pay my parents' upkeep. Refuse it if Mr. Falcone ever tries to cover it."

The caretaker checked his ledger and went still.

"Miss, your parents' plot is already six months overdue. We tried to reach the family, but the number was dead."

I remembered I'd changed my number after I left. The carelessness of it turned my stomach. To leave the dead untended is a blood-debt no man of honor lets slide. Failing it is a disgrace that follows you down into the ground.

Lorenzo didn't even love me anymore. Why in God's name would he think of my dead parents?

I settled the balance and paid ten years ahead, then walked out, hollow.

But the moment I stepped through the cemetery gate, I heard the one voice I'll never forget as long as I live.

"Lorenzo, caro, how good of you to remember today's the anniversary of Vittoria's real father passing. If the old man knew you came to share a glass with him, he'd be floating with joy down there."

I turned stiffly and saw Lorenzo climbing the steps, Vittoria on one arm and Rosa Frost on the other.

"It's the least I can do," he said.

"Silly boy, what's this stiffness? In a few days you'll be calling me Mamma."

Lorenzo laughed warmly and obliged her. He smoothed the lapel of his too-perfect suit with his palm, then called Rosa Frost Mamma.

My eyes burning, I slipped away to keep my word to my friends.

The moment we met, I said it straight out. The union was off.

They exchanged a glance, then asked me, careful as people stepping around a wired door.

"Adriana, so you already know?"

But I was confused how they knew at all.

Bristling, they laid out photographs in front of me. Lorenzo and Vittoria, walking in together to seal the pact, the paperwork already filed between them.

"Adriana, we're behind you running from this. I want to see what a joke it'll be when Vittoria tries to steal a wedding that doesn't even have a bride."

The way they put it, I almost started to look forward to it.

The day before the ceremony, Lorenzo came home with a brand-new pair of running shoes.

I asked him flatly, "Don't you hate running shoes?"

He blanked for a second, then patted my head.

"So I can run fast carrying the bride tomorrow."

The bride he meant wasn't me.

And the smile that spread across his lips wasn't for me either.

So it seemed that having me robbed of my own union in front of every family that mattered, just to prove he loved Vittoria, made him very happy.

The next day, I walked through the venue once.

The enormous poster blew up every trace of that painted portrait, my borrowed face beside his.

I took out a pair of scissors and cut my own face from it, that bright young face full of life. Then I pressed my thumb against the bare band of skin where my mother's ring once sat, and I hailed a car to the airport.

When the attendant told me it was time to silence my phone, Lorenzo's calls came flooding in.